The von der Leyen Commission took office on Saturday 1 December 2019.
On 11 December 2019, the Commission adopted an ambitious European Green Deal.
Even before the Commission took office, it seemed clear that the von der Leyen Commission would be a Green Commission. The President’s Political Guidelines made that clear enough. The Green Deal is the first priority.
Even if this agenda was a necessary concession to secure her appointment as President by the EP, President von der Leyen’s Commission is the Greenest I have know. It has an air of French determinism, even if the Green Deal’s intellectual origins come from the USA.
I remember at the time many thought that I was making up ‘green plans in the pipeline’. My imagination was never creative enough. I just read the non-papers, public documents, and concessions made to the EP to secure confirmation. Even if the writing was on the wall, many choose not to see it.
So, coming up to two and half years in, it could be useful to look at where things are at.
I am looking at my personal Green Deal initiative tracker. It contains around 290 initiatives. This is a mix of ordinary and secondary legislative proposals, and many more non-legislative initiatives (strategies, policy statements, global agreements, reviews, action plans and lots of Communications).
Many sectors of the economy and society will be impacted if the package of measures is adopted and implemented. If the EU’s dreadful record on implementation and enforcement of environmental law is anything to go by, the real-world impacts are going to be less than planned for.
Many of the proposals are revisions of existing legislation on the books. Some plan radical overhauls of the existing framework, but many are technical updates and upgrades. More incremental improvements to the existing order, than the genuine revolution given off by Commission Press Statements.
Some environmental NGOs have wised up to the gap between the political statements of the Commission – both in public and in private – and what they manage to propose.
There is nothing mysterious about the Green Deal list. It is hiding in plain sight. The Green Deal Initiatives can be tracked by following the Commission’s Annual Work Programme, and the College of Commissioner’s meeting minutes, and adopted Communications. Cross-referencing with Have Your Say and legislative tracker will give you an accurate picture of what’s in the pipeline.
I realise this all requires reading. And, I realise reading is unfashionable. But, most of the information is hiding in plain site.
I look to chunk things down to the strategies the Commission’s rolled out:
- Climate ambition
- Industrial Strategy
- Circular Economy
- Sustainable and smart mobility
- Farm to Form
- Biodiversity Strategy
- Chemical Strategy
- Offshore Strategy
- Methane Strategy
- Renovation Wave
- Hydrogen Strategy
- Energy Integration Strategy
- Just Transition
There is some overlap on what some of the initiatives are asking for and the Commission are now combining initiatives together.
What is interesting is that the Commission is more or less on track with delivering their proposals on time, give or take a few months. This is coming at a tremendous cost of physical burnout of good staff tasked with preparing proposals under short timetables. This is perhaps a reflection that the political leadership of the Commission is unaware of the sheer volume of work required to prepared a strong legislative proposal. In my experience, this takes at least 2 years of deliberation, preferably 3 years. My experience of air quality legislation was that the Commission’s 3 year preparation of new air quality legislation was core to securing sensitive political files fast political adoption.
And when it comes to legislative proposals, the EP and Council are, more or less, passing the proposals unscathed on the fundamentals. What the Commission can put out the door, the Council and EP can agree to within 18 months.
Those who thought I was making up the Green Deal back in December 2019 still can’t quite believe it is happening and I think hope it will just disappear. I fear they will be disappointed. At the end of the day, it is backed by most EU leaders and MEPs.
The real unknown is whether this Commission will use the principle of political discontinuity and apply the May 2023 cut off for new legislative proposals. If they do, it will be curious to see how many Green Deal proposals in development will be tabled under this Commission, or whether they will have to wait for the first work programme of the new Commission in December 2024.